Re:Why I'm Productive in Clojure (2013)
by kibwen on Sunday October 22, 2017 @06:18AM
(#15526021)
Eh, I don't use Clojure, but I don't think that a lack of a high growth rate is that big a deal. By my unscientific estimate, languages only need about 20,000 active OSS contributors to have a healthy OSS ecosystem, and that's easier to achieve than ever given the growth in the absolute number of programmers. As long as the growth of the language outpaces the attrition rate, it can thrive just the same.
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Re:Why I'm Productive in Clojure (2013)
by aaron-lebo on Sunday October 22, 2017 @08:32AM
(#15526521)
I've never heard this expressed, but it makes a lot of sense. Wonder what that actual number would be and the best way to measure it?
My estimate is based on CPAN, which, in the early 2000s, was already lauded for offering an extensive, high-quality ecosystem despite having "just" 20,000 packages (contrast modern NPM, which claims >500k). Hence I consider this the lower bound of an ecosystem which can be reasonably expected to provide foundations, if not pre-made solutions, for anything you might expect to do in the course of general purpose programming. And it seems reasonable to assume that one maintainer per package is enough to sustain such a system.